


and i hope that this will do

by nellywrites



Series: family of choice [2]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Adoption, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crack Treated Seriously, Families of Choice, Father-Daughter Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Slice of Life, Teenage Drama, the family that hunts demons together stays together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2020-11-08 19:16:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20840642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nellywrites/pseuds/nellywrites
Summary: So what if her savior turned out to be a chain smoking, functional alcoholic conman with worse demons that hers? He’d housed and protected her, encouraged and nurtured her, and yes, even loved her through her worst times. He’d shown her more kindness than anyone else she’d met since her life fell apart. They aren’t blood, but that doesn’t mean they are not family.AU diverging from Legends season 3, in which John went back for Nora in the asylum, managed to free her from Mallus and unofficially adopted her. Nearly 4 years later, Nora's about to graduate high school and John's struggling with the fact that his foster daughter's all grown up.





	and i hope that this will do

**Author's Note:**

> Once upon a time I made a cracky post on my tumblr with headcanons about an AU in which John saved Nora when she was a teen and then subsequently adopted her. I wanted to write fic about that, and I finally did. I might do more small fics in this verse, if the muse strikes me. This is just a quick ficlet, barely edited, so it's much less elaborate than most of my other fics but I wanted to capitalize on the sudden burst of inspiration and finish it quickly. Let me know what you think!
> 
> PS. The Geraldine in this fic is the daughter of John's best friend Chas. In my head, he moved back to NY after the events of 'Constantine' and got back together with his ex-wife. Geraldine and Nora are the same age.

“I don’t bloody care why, Nora! You shouldn’t have done it. And that’s that.”

Nora pauses her walking and tries not to scream in frustration. It’s the season of the witch, there’s a full moon in the sky and John’s in a fucking mood. He’s always in a mood but something’s got him acting pricklier than usual tonight and she had to go and make it worse by telling him what she and Geraldine had gotten up to last weekend. She should’ve known better. What if he goes and tells Geraldine’s mom? If Mrs. Chandler finds out, she’ll never let Nora near her daughter again and Nora will just die if she has to go through what’s left of high school without her best friend. But, no, John wouldn’t do that. Mrs. Chandler already hates him enough as it is. He’s not about to give her another excuse. Like his wayward ward corrupting her precious daughter.

Still, Nora really thought John at least would’ve been proud of her for what she’d managed.

“Ugh, I don’t understand you,” Nora says, speeding up her pace to catch up with him, knees slightly bent and stiff to prevent slipping in the wet pavement. The supply bag hanging from her shoulder bangs rhythmically against her thigh. “You said I shouldn’t be ashamed of my magic.”

“And you shouldn’t, but this isn’t about that and you know it.” He stops walking abruptly and turns to her, fixing her with a serious stare. He looks around, as if to make sure they’re alone. Cause, yeah, they’re in stupid Brooklyn Heights, far away from the peeling walls of their own spooky flat on the other side of the borough.

“Your power comes from dark magic, yeah?” he starts. The cigarette pinched between his teeth bobs around as he talks, shedding ashes everywhere and Nora bites her lip to keep herself from commenting on the pun. _ Darhk magic_. They’ve both made that joke before, often, but now isn’t the time to bring it back.

“And you know what dark magic means,” John finishes, punctuating his speech with a smoky exhale.

“Sacrifice,” Nora says with a deep sigh and a barely contained roll of her eyes. They’ve had this conversation so many times she can recite the speech by heart.

_ Magic’s the world’s greatest profanity, luv_, he always says. _ It feels fucking amazing but it always comes with its price. _

“Aye, sacrifice.” John makes a dramatic sweep with his arms as if that settles the matter closed. He turns on his heel and continues on like nothing’s happened, stepping around puddles and the overflow of Halloween decorations along the sidewalk. He turns his coat collar up to shield himself against the autumn mist. A puff of smoke follows his silhouette. Could he look like any more of a cliché?

“Well, what would you have done?” Nora calls out after him and fitfully brushes her tangled hair away from eyes. Fuck the bloody humid weather.

“That is a question you should never ask yourself, pet,” John responds over his shoulder. “I’m not the sort of example you should ever be following.” He turns to look at her again. “Do as I say, not as I do. Now, what have I always told you is the first rule of magic?”

“Umm, never use magic when a simple con will do?”

“Aye, exactly. Nice to see your memory still works, even if your common sense seems to be missing.”

“Well, I do live with you,” she deadpans and blinks her large blue eyes owlishly.

Her answer provokes a raspy half huff, half chuckle from him. He mutters something unintelligible under his breath and goes on walking.

Common sense. Yeah. That is something entirely missing from their household. There’s nothing common about their arrangement. She doesn’t want to think about what would become of them without Mrs. Chandler’s reluctant interventions. It’s Friday night and The Chandlers are having family dinner cooked by Mr. Chandler himself. Meanwhile, here they are on their way to banish some unwanted evil presence from a Brooklyn townhouse. How’s that for family bonding night?

It’s pretty great, actually. Sometimes Nora forgets how lucky she is to be with someone who not only understands her magic, but encourages her to nurture it. 

Her father had had magic, too. 

She hates comparing them, John and her father, but on nights like this, she can’t help but consider the possibilities of what her life would’ve been like if her father hadn’t died. Would he have taught her how to wield her magic? And more importantly, to what end?

Being here among the rows of brownstones in Brooklyn Heights doesn’t help. It reminds her of where she’d grown up before-- well, before. 

She shifts to look at John from the corner of her eye. Nearly four years she’s lived with him now. At least it hasn’t been dull. He catches her looking and winks at her, and she gives him a close-lipped smile. She adjusts the strap of her bag higher on her shoulder and tries to sync her steps with John’s.

Nora knows they've arrived at their destination when the air suddenly turns charged and oppressive. An invisible weight bears down on her chest. She fidgets with the strap of her bag and turns to look at the brownstone on her right. It looks like every other brownstone in the neighborhood. Nothing on the outside betrays its dark secrets. There’s a single carved pumpkin on the stoop. 

How fucking sad.

John climbs the steps to the door and Nora waits at the bottom of the stairs while John goes in to inspect the house first. She waits for him to call her before following him inside.

The house is nice in that old money way. Like, it doesn't feel like anyone should actually live here. Antique furniture, useless knick knacks and so many portraits. She'll never stop being amused by the correlation between expensive neighborhoods and demonic activity. Oh, what petty things men sell their souls for.

Beyond the general cool aloofness of the house, there’s something dark and sinister hovering. The demon, it knows they’re here. The hairs on the back of her neck stand on end and Nora stuffs her curled hands into the pockets of her leather jacket. 

Nora hurries further into the house in search of John, exploring the rooms along the way. She notices that all the mirrors are covered. She wonders if it was John’s doing, or if it’s something their client did to try to fix his mess.

She finds John standing in the middle of a large sitting room, looking up at the high ceilings. He rests his hands on his hips and declares this room will do for the ritual. She puts her bag down on a console table and together, she and John push the furniture and roll the carpet out of the way.

With that done, Nora busies herself with taking all their candles out of the bag of supplies while John draws their spell trap on the hardwood floor. They work in comfortable and familiar silence like the kind of well oiled operation they are. 

She chances a look at John from over her shoulder. He’s squinting at the paper in his hands but he’s lost that pinched look from earlier and Nora figures now's a good a time as any to bring it all back to where she’d tried to steer the conversation earlier.

“So, you know how we're driving to Boston to look at colleges?” she starts and waits until he acknowledges her with a grunt. “Well, it turns out the Dropkick Murphys are playing a Halloween show that Saturday and we were thinking that we could stay a few days after the campus tours, just over the weekend and make a trip out of it.”

“Who’s we?”

“Well, Geraldine, obviously and Mary and Kelly and Emma and maybe Brian and Kyle,” she speeds through those two last names, hoping John’s too distracted by his drawing to pay much attention, but no such luck.

The chalk comes to a halt and John lifts his head to look at her, still crouching.

“Those blokes wouldn’t happen to be gay, would they?”

She gives him a flat look. He knows they aren’t. Kyle had taken her to junior prom.

“Then no,” he says and goes back to sketching the trap.

“John, come on,” she wheedles but he’s already shaking his head. “Please, John. Do you want me to be the only lame nerd who has to come home early? Everyone else is staying. You’d have to pay for a bus or a plane ticket then, because they’re not driving back until Sunday.”

“Oh no, however will we afford the $15 bus ticket.”

“Why are you being so unreasonable, this is so unfair!”

“Bloody hell, Nora, I said no!”

The vein on his forehead pulses visibly but she’s not letting that deter her just yet. She goes back to trimming the wicks on their candles for a few seconds before she speaks again. 

“Geraldine says Renee didn't take that much convincing,” she says casually.

“Well, we can’t all compare to Renee’s masterful parenting, can we?” he sketches the last two runes on the sigil and then dusts his hands off on his pants. “Besides, Geraldine's 18 and you’re not.”

“Really? That’s what you’re going with? You moved to London when you were my age.”

“What did we just say about following my example?”

“Come off your fucking high horse, John, it’s not like you’re even--”

John suddenly stands at full height and juts his jaw out as he says in a voice hard and cold, “What? I’m not what?”

“My father,” Nora says, making sure she’s looking right into his eyes when she says it.

“And thank bloody hell for that. Father or not, I’m the only bleeding thing you’ve got, sweetheart, and at least I didn’t sell you out to a demon, eh.”

Nora’s chin wobbles and traitorous tears burn in her eyes at his vicious words. She crosses her arms over her chest and turns her back to him, willing herself not to cry like blubbering baby in the middle of someone else’s haunted living room. 

Behind her, John takes deep, loud breaths and the click of his lighter punctuates the tense silence.

“We’ll talk about this later,” he eventually says, voice stilted and contrite. “Let’s just deal with this bogeyman first, yeah?”

They always do that when they fight. Hurt each other like that. Still, she shouldn't have gone there first. Her father’s always a touchy subject. John’s never been able to mask his hatred of ‘ol daddy dearest’ as he’s always called him. John can’t forgive her father for what he’d done to her, even if a part of her still loves him. It’s the same hatred he has for Alex Logue, father of the little girl over whom John had lost his soul. The same hatred he harbors for his own late father.

_ A man who hurts his own child deserves the worst punishment Hell has to offer, _he’d told her once, fingers tracing the shiny burn marks on his forearms.

The evil presence in the house looms larger. She can feel it circling around. It pokes at them, clearly feeding on the anger and negative emotions, and Nora can’t help but think about John’s other little girl lost. Nine years old and stuck down there in Hell through no fault of her own. She shivers. That could’ve been her. That _was_ almost her. Because of her father. 

But John had saved her.

And now they get to save others, the two of them together. Two sad broken orphans plagued by demons of the real kind. 

What a fucking pair, right?

Nora wipes her eyes and takes a deep breath. This isn’t the time to be hurt. They have to focus on the task at hand. _ Magic’s 9 parts conviction, 1 part luck_, John’s always said. _ Never go into a ritual if your head’s not on straight. _

She gathers the candles and places one on each corner of the star John just finished drawing, lighting each one in turn. Once the candles are burning she takes the vial of goat’s blood out of the bag and pours it in a stone bowl. She coats her hands in it. John follows. Then, they sit on either side of the sigil chalked on the hardwood floor. 

John searches her face, a question in his eyes, and Nora nods.

At his signal, they sweep their hands over the burning candles in perfect unison and begin their incantation. Soon, Nora feels the foreign presence in the room be drawn into their circle. This part always scares her, no matter how many times she does it. The demon whispers his promises into her head and her voice cracks for a moment as her lungs struggle to breathe. She forces herself to focus on John’s steady form instead. He’d protect her. He’d never let another demon take her. She knows that, at least. Her voice gains strength again and the sigil lights up in a purple glow. A burst of supernatural energy rushes through her. They chant louder and faster until a howl splits the air and the candles burn off. 

She counts her breaths. In and out. Slow and steady. John asks her if she’s alright and she nods. 

John stands and wipes his bloody hands on a rag and then busies himself with gathering the candles back into the bag. Nora just sits there still.

“And that’s one more bastard back where he belongs,” John says and looks at her expectantly.

She gives him a half-hearted smile and finally makes to stand. She goes to dust the chalk marks off her black jeans when she realizes her hands are still bloody, so she just curls them at her sides. 

John smudges the chalk runes away with the soles of his boots but he stops when he notices her. He straightens, slowly, and approaches her. He searches her face and gently encourages her to look at him. Nora stares into his dark eyes and immediately feels comforted by their steadiness. 

John takes her soiled hands in his and softly begins to wipe the blood away. He holds himself hesitantly, like he’s working up the nerve to say something. 

“It’s not about you, you know,” he finally says. “If you’re out there, somewhere without me… I’ve pissed off a bollocking load of people in my sorry life, Nora. Not to mention, demons and if anything--”

Oh. She gets it now.

“I think I’ve gotten pretty good at getting out of dangerous situations. I got that from you.”

“Thanks for reminding me what a smashing guardian I make.”

“No, what I mean is, I can take care of myself. I’m strong and capable, and not afraid of who I am anymore. And that is in large part, thanks to you. I’m glad you came for me, John.”

“I’m glad I came for you, too.”

Nora takes a step back and stares at her shoes. Neither of them is big on emotional declarations. 

“Feels like yesterday I brought you home a frail little bird, afraid of every shadow in the flat. Not that I blame you none. I mean, some strange bloke with a funny accent steals you away and he doesn’t even bother to stock up the pantry with something other than beer and gin.”

“You forgot about the butter. You had butter, too.”

He hangs his head and lets out a self-effacing laugh and a full, genuine grin splits Nora’s face. John had been so clueless as to how to deal with a 13 year old girl. 

“You took me out for bagels in the morning,” Nora says.

“You remember that?”

“Of course I do.”

It's one of her fondest memories. Her first morning after John stole her from the asylum. She'd felt like a girl in a movie, having New York bagels in a New York deli. And not even the memory of what happened later can mar it. Because beyond John’s nervousness and embarrassment at being wholly unprepared for what he’d taken on, she’d seen what truly scared him. He was afraid of letting her down. It’d been the first time she felt safe in years.

So what if her savior turned out to be a chain smoking, functional alcoholic conman with worse demons that hers? He’d housed and protected her, encouraged and nurtured her, and yes, even loved her through her worst times. He’d shown her more kindness than anyone else she’d met since her life fell apart. They aren’t blood, but that doesn’t mean they are not family.

“I was just as scared as you were, you know,” John says. “I didn’t wanna muck it up. Not again, not with you.”

“You didn’t.”

“Yeah, we’ve done alright, haven’t we?”

“So, does that mean I can go on the trip?” 

Nora makes sure to give him her best pout and puppy eyes and sure enough, a second later, he sighs and shakes his head.

“Aye, all right.” 

Nora squeals in triumph. She crosses the room in three large steps and throws her arms around his shoulders, leaving bloody hand prints over John’s trench coat.

“Nora, watch the coat. I just got the bleeding thing dry cleaned.”

“Sorry.”

“You really thought you had me there with the Dropkick Murphys thing, didn’t ya? You know I prefer The Pogues. But listen, before you go on the trip, I do have some conditions. One, no magic.”

Nora groans.

“I mean it, Nora. No magic without me. And I need to have a wee chat with that Kyler bloke and casually mention I can and will send him straight to hell if he touches you.”

“Oh my god, you’re so embarrassing. Can you try to be somewhat normal for once? Besides, it’s completely unnecessary because if _ Kyle _ crosses a line I can send him straight to hell myself,” she counters.

“I know,” John says and he gets the softest look on his face. She’s seen it only twice before. Once, that year they spent Christmas with his sister and his niece, the other the time she caught him staring at the boyfriend he had a couple of years back when the boyfriend wasn’t looking.

Wait. Does he look at her like that when _ she’s _not looking? Something warm builds in the pit of her belly.

“Thanks, dad.”

He freezes for a moment and the corners of his eyes and mouth pinch in delight. She’s only called him that a handful of times. And mostly as a joke. But she’s not joking now.

“Playing to your mark’s emotions. Well done. Maybe you really are my kid.”

His voice is light and teasing but his eyes are suspiciously bright. They just stare at each other, sharing slightly dopey smiles for a few beats before he finally breaks the stare and bends to pick up the bag with their supplies. He slings it over one shoulder and holds his other arm out, inviting her to tuck into his side. When she curls into him, John drops a quick kiss on her hair.

“Come on, luv. Let’s go home. I need a smoke and a stiff one. Or three.”

“Can I have one… dad?” she asks, her big blue eyes pleading. 

“What have I told you about playing dirty like that?”

“That if the sucker falls for it he deserves it?”

“Why, you cheeky little demon.” He pokes her side with his finger and her girlish laughter fills the room where once ghosts dwelled.

“But seriously, can we get some Starbucks on the way home?”

**Author's Note:**

> this fic was inspired by [this photo](https://www.instagram.com/p/BepBXEbnF8m/) of the actress who played young Nora. It just screamed 'take your daughter to work day' to me.
> 
> I know that realistically John wouldn't encourage Nora to pursue magic and would try to keep her away from all demon related things, but this is borderline crack. Just go with it.


End file.
